He was stunned to see a young male engaged in necrophilia when it attempted to mate with a DEAD female.

Sexual abuse of young chicks was also observed as were acts of avian homosexuality.

The Edwardian Englishman was so horrified by his own findings that he initially recorded them in Greek to make them inaccessible to the average reader.

Mr Levick described how male penguins would gather in “hooligan bands of half a dozen or more and hang about the outskirts of the knolls, whose inhabitants they annoy by their constant acts of depravity”.

London’s Natural History Museum has now unearthed the landmark study entitled Sexual Habits of the Adelie Penguin, which had been lost for decades.